Workshop on Global Imbalances
22 June 2006, Birkbeck University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX
Rooms 539 (lunch), 540 (meeting)

Never a day passes without some news item expressing concern over the US current account deficit, running at over 5% of US national income, and the large accumulations of dollar assets in China, Japan and elsewhere. China's foreign exchange reserves are around $900 billion, huge relative to a national income of roughly $1300 billion. The US, China and others disagreee about the causes and consequences of this situation, and its implications for the rest of the world. Should China allow its currency to float? Is the imbalance, as some argue, responsible for currently low world real interest rates? What are the possible adjustment paths? What does it imply for European economies? Is there a need for an internationally co-ordinated policy response, with an important role for the International Monetary Fund, as the Governor of the Bank of England suggests?


Anyone interested in participating should contact the Programme Administrator, Tim Byne


Programme

(The Workshop will be preceeded by a seminar presented by Adam Posen from the Bank of England / Institute of International Studies, entitled "Do Markets Care Who Chairs The Central Bank?" All are welcome to attend. The seminar will run from 11.30am - 1.00pm at Birkbeck, room 745. More information and a copy of Adam's paper for this seminar can be found from: http://www.ems.bbk.ac.uk/seminars/eco/ecosem.htm)

1.00 – 2.00
Buffet Lunch (Room 539)

2.00 - 2.45
Christopher Meissner (Cambridge) and Alan M. Taylor (University of California , Davis)
Losing our Marbles in the New Century? The Great Rebalancing in Historical Perspective

2.45 – 3.30
David Backus (NYU), Espen Henriksen (Oslo), Frederic Lambert (NYU), and Chris Telmer (Carnegie-Mellon)
Current Account Fact and Fiction

3.30 – 4.00
Tea

4.00 – 4.45 John Driffill (Birkbeck), Marcus Miller ( Warwick ) and Lei Zhang (Warwick)
Capital Flows, Interest Rates and Policy Coordination: Two Views of Global Equilibrium



Back to Events